The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) will sweep approximately 52 per cent of the total votes in the December 7 presidential polls, while its rival, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) will get 46.9 per cent of the votes, a local research group, Marketing Social Research International (MSRI), has said.

The findings show that the other smaller parties would barely make one per cent of the collective votes.

The research was conducted between September and October 2012 across all the 230 constituencies in Ghana.

MSRI is an offshoot of the global research firm, Research International (RI), an affiliate of WPP Research, the world’s largest communications service group. WPP is a global research conglomerate with over 162, 000 staff working in 3,000 offices across 110 countries.

The company is likened with communications firm such as Fitch, the global rating organization, Kander, an internationally acclaimed research group and Ogilvy South Africa, a communications group with footprints across Africa.

The contents of the findings, available to Daily Guide, show RI using a sufficiently large sample size of 4,600 people across different demographics in the country.

According to the poll, the research survey, which specifically targeted the two biggest parties, NPP and NDC, had a confidence level of 98 per cent with a minimal margin of error of 1.8 per cent-plus or minus in the survey, the NPP is set to sweep Christian votes with 56 per cent against the NDC’s 40 per cent.

The NDC’s votes would mostly come from Ghana’s Islamic and traditional religions. The NDC is set to win about 63 per cent of Muslim votes against the NPP’s 39 per cent. The same trend is expected to be repeated among voters in the traditional religion where the NDC would sweep over 60 per cent of the votes.

Interestingly, age has a major role to play in determining the direction of votes in the forthcoming elections.

The survey shows that older voters of between 50 to 100 years are likely going to be the best bet for the NDC at an average of 53 per cent of total votes, while the more populous youthful voting segment of between 18 years and 49 years would be rooting for the NPP with a lead of about 55 per cent over its rival.

The position is vastly different from the attempt of the NDC to portray its candidates as a youthful person born after Ghana’s March 6, 1957 independence.

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